Funeral Home Puts Wrong Body In Casket For Wake

Death of a loved one brings a difficult mix of emotions and experiences. But at least the right body is supposed to be in the casket. Sadly for Marvel Freeman and her family, that is exactly what happened. Arriving for the funeral of her mother, Mary Anderson, she looked in the coffin and saw a stranger, according to WPEC-TV.

Freeman and family arrived at the Stevens Lakeside Chapel in West Palm Beach, Florida an hour before the public viewing was supposed to start. But the person in the coffin wasn't her mother. "We get here today for her wake, and it's not her," Freeman said to WPEC. "They have somebody else in all of her belongings."That's right, it wasn't a mix-up in rooms. The funeral home had allegedly prepared the wrong body with Anderson's clothing.

"It took us a whole day for us to find what we wanted her to be buried in," said Susan Williams, Freeman's sister, to WZVN-TV. "To take her undergarments and put on somebody else, and then take them off her, and put them back on her, come on, come on. That's not right," said Williams.

"They told me they were going to fix it. How are they going to fix it?" Freeman told the station.

Eventually a van carrying Anderson arrived from another location of the funeral home. The explanation for the mix-up was that both women had a first name of Mary. And that, apparently, was the only excuse offered.

"Two Marys," Freeman said to WZVN. "Both of their names are supposedly Mary. It's still no resemblance whatsoever."

Things finally settled down, to the extent they could, after the wake could finally get underway.

"But they done messed up our whole entire memory of our sister and their mother. It's not fair," Williams said.

WZVN reported it had tried multiple times to reach the funeral director but that he never responded. Maybe he left his phone and his computer in his other office.